Deny & Disavow: Distancing the Imperial Past in the Culture Wars

Alan Lester’s Deny and Disavow is an analysis which challenges the distancing, denial and disavowal of British racism, and racially-charged violence, especially Britain’s response to the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. Prof. Lester is a world expert in studies of Empire and colonial history. He is coeditor of a leading book series on imperial history, Studies in Imperialism, and has written nine books over the last 25 years, the latest being Ruling the World: Freedom, Crisis and Liberalism in the Nineteenth-Century British Empire, Cambridge University Press, 2021. Deny and Disavow boldly confronts apologists for the British Empire (including the Prime Minister and Cabinet Secretaries). Lester contends that this ’distancing, denial and disavowal policy is part of a deliberate strategy to refute the claims and resist the demands of those who want recognition and reorganisation’. His analysis draws upon thirty years of research and writing and supports BLM’s call for increased awareness of the legacies of structural racism bequeathed by the British Empire.